trends are an interesting thing

Trends are an interesting thing. It’s like when you’re on your phone searching for a hot spot for service. Once you find it, you plant yourself there and before you know it others that see that you’ve found the spot, they come to use it also. You found it first, so it wasn’t known that the spot was there before you. But once you use it, it becomes a thing. Then everyone knows it's a thing. Much like trends. Just because one person wears their hair a certain way, or wears a certain color that doesn’t automatically mean there’s a new trend. But as people see a certain style and get inspired by it, more people in a certain region or a certain class of people will start doing the same thing. The flocking toward something is what is considered a trend. They start in many different types of ways- pop culture influence, music, politics, nature, or other areas. Fashion designers then create runway looks that are inspired by what’s happening in the world. For instance, the global pandemic of 2020 took such a huge toll on society. People being forced to stay indoors, use zoom, and engage in excessive screen time because of fear of going outside to experience life. You couldn’t travel, you couldn’t gather together, you couldn’t even really go to the grocery store. Because of this, beauty and fashion trends took a complete turn. People craved adventure, liveliness, and nature once again. In a way we hadn’t experienced as humanity in quite some time. Since then, you’ve seen people embrace the natural. Wearing less makeup, or doing a more ‘no makeup’ makeup look. Natural curls being embraced. The simple things in life being pursued a little more than they were before. People craving warmth over coolness. So you’ve also seen hair trends gravitate more toward natural warms, reds, chocolates. People don’t want to seem fake anymore. They want things to feel alive, warm, not so serious. 

So that was just one example of trends that started because of politics and pop culture. This has been going on for centuries. These days, things are a lot different with social media being how it is. Trends come and go much faster than they used to. But I think there's something to say about smaller, facading trends and trends that last a decade long. Facading trends come from tik tok, like a new claw clip becoming popular and all the gen z girls going after it. Vs. more extended trends affect not just gen z with a 5 second attention span, but rather all of society itself. Either way, whether we like it or not, trends affect our lives. If you’re the kind of person to study trends before they pop off and you like to watch runway fashion shows and see how said ‘trends’ trickle down into street style. Or if you’re the kind of person to see something on tik tok and go to the link in the person’s bio to buy the article. We all are inspired by external movements in our societal circles that help to shape our own unique style. And I think that's a really interesting thing.